I purchased my first VCR ($400 in 1984!) just to watch Letterman on NBC. I’d seen bits and pieces of his show and just didn’t want to miss it.
Letterman’s morning show started just when I started college and didn’t have any morning classes. When he went to Late Night I recorded the last half hour of Carson and all of Letterman on a two hour tape. Late night shows were 90 minutes back then.
And the winner for the late-night host who got under trump’s skin the most:
What a freakin’ baby (trump that is, not Kimmel) 
I have the same experience with some of Conan’s podcasts (on Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend). Each podcast has him interviewing a celebrity, and I’m tempted to skip the people I’ve never heard of before, but then by the end of the podcast I’m a fan.
I doubt he’d be anybody’s favorite, but does anyone besides me remember Joe Pyne? I watched him a few times on Los Angeles TV in the early 60’s.
Might be unfair, but: Jon Oliver.
Count me as another who thinks that Graham Norton is brilliant at making celebrities comfortable and elicits great stories. He’s the best host, in my opinion.
Conan and Letterman.
I haven’t watched any late night talk shows in many years. They’ve become too political.
I LOVE Conan’s podcast.
When I was a teenager and Carson and Letterman were really the only game in town, I always preferred Letterman. Even at the time I could see how his whole act was a subversion of the pomposity of showbiz, even as he was an active part of the machine. Carson always seemed like my parents’ jam: wouldn’t ruffle any feathers, clean (borderline hacky) jokes, and aimed directly at middle-brow sensibilities.
I never watched much Conan as it aired (too late for me at the time, TBH) but I always liked him a lot, and every time I see a clip from his shows I think, damn, he was really something special.
Nowadays I don’t watch any of them, but I always check out Seth Myers “A Closer Look” when it hits YouTube, and I’ll occasionally watch a Colbert interview. I never thought Fallon was terribly funny (yay, another pie-in-the-face sketch (eyeroll)) but Kimmel has his moments. I miss Jon Stewart’s era of the Daily Show, for sure.
I was just catching up on some celeb interviews on youtube inspired by this thread, and realized that I had completely forgotten about James Corden. I see he only has one mention here, but he’s been going since 2015. I never watch these shows live - why does he get so little attention?
I remember him. Wish I didn’t. About all I remember is that he was the first “insult” interviewer I ever saw; he had a “wooden leg”; he told people to garge with razorblades.
If “late night talk shows” may be broadened to include talk podcasts, and you enjoy absurd humor (which I do), the late Norm MacDonald’s podcast was one of the funniest. He had a knack for coercing his guests down his rabbit hole of absurdity. I miss that guy.
Definitely NSFW:
It seemed to me at the time that his entire shtick was being an angry hostile asshole.
Can we use local hosts? Because if so, I nominate Wally George.
I remember watching a late-period Carson Tonight Show episode, and at the end of Carson’s monologue he announced Morrissey would be appearing that night. A bunch of youngsters in the audience started loudly cheering, and Carson did a very clear double-take look of anger and confusion. You could tell he was thinking “who the hell is that mopey, skinny little shit I saw backstage, and why is he more beloved than me?” It was a definite ‘end of the old guard’ moment. Carson retired less than a year later.
I was watching that episode as well. Bill Cosby was also a guest that night, and his routine had zero actual material in it: he’d just say “I was just backstage talking to Morrissey…” and then he’d pause with a confused look on his face while the crowd screamed for a minute, then he’d repeat some variation on it. Yeah, the previous generation was totally outmatched that night.
Eh. This is a pretty good article about that episode and it seems Johnny’s annoyance was less at Morrissey and more at his entitled cult-like fans making for a bad bordering on hostile audience for a talk show.
Morrissey, Morrissey’s fans, it’s all of a piece. I think my point is still made that it was definitely an ‘end of the old guard’ moment.
Every talk show host has ridiculously popular ‘flavor of the week’ guests that can threaten to derail the show if they don’t handle it deftly. Carson famously had a petty, vindictive streak-- Dana Carvey has told the story on his and David Spade’s podcast about how he was often a guest on Carson until he did a relatively mild SNL skit lampooning how Carson was out-of-touch with things, and was permanently banned from the Tonight Show. And then there’s Joan Rivers, who was also permanently banned for the unforgivable atrocity of trying to host her own talk show.
I’m probably not really disagreeing with you, but I see it more as a perfect storm of Johnny having one foot out the door to retirement, a particularly bad night of material for the show, and a pissy audience making the whole night’s work more difficult/unenjoyable. But then, maybe that’s how a lot of “passing of the guard” moments happen. A confluence of circumstances.
I’m no longer a fan of Bill Cosby (for obvious reasons), but he did a good job of turning the Morrissey fanaticism on the Tonight Show into a pretty funny bit:
I can’t find a clip of Carson’s monologue that night, so I don’t know how he handled it.